It is as if this adaptation of the Ken Loach movie has been suspended between quotation marks. Topping and tailing Mark Calvert’s heartfelt production is the claim by Damian Green, former secretary of state for work and pensions, that I, Daniel Blake was a “work of fiction”. Safer for a politician to assume this story was made up than to admit its central truth: that our benefits system is punitive and demeaning – and is designed to be that way.
This staging, adapted by the film’s star Dave Johns, refuses to let Britain’s leaders off the hook. The story of a decent man laid off because of heart problems, only to find a support system purpose-built to make his life difficult, is interspersed with verbatim remarks by politicians from George Osborne to Liz Truss. Whether it is David Cameron’s vacuous “big society,” Thérèse Coffey’s recommendation that the poor work “more hours” to pay for food or Lee Anderson’s assertion that people “can’t cook a meal from scratch”, the show repeatedly reminds us of the gulf between political rhetoric and life as it is lived.
